My wife and I do a fair amount of solo and remote camping, often with our teardrop trailer.
As such, the ability for self-recovery seemed like a very good idea. I’d always liked the stealth look of a hidden winch on a GX, so I decided to pursue that route.
After researching a bit, I found HK Offroad. Primarily a Jeep shop in Southern Cal, the owner Bash has a GX470 and offers a couple items for that vehicle…a swing out rear tire carrier, and a hidden winch mount. I ordered the winch plate, and after talking with him about a few custom changes he built and shipped it promptly.
The winch plate is extremely strong, with 1/4” steel, beefy recovery points, beautiful welds and plenty of gussets and structure. Weighing in at about 60 lbs and attaching to the frame rails with 10 bolts, this thing is hell-for-stout, yet everything lined up perfectly. Install was a breeze.
After removing the bumper fascia, my buddy and I removed the front crash bar. This gets discarded, but the hardware gets re-used.
The HK winch plate installs on the frame rails using that hardware.
Once the plate was secure, we bolted a Smittybuilt X2O 10k winch to it and wired it up. Everything was very straightforward.
Bash has some installation pics on his site…one of them shows a rig that had the bumper nicely trimmed…it looked great!
So, out came the grinder, and 10 minutes later I had a bobbed bumper and a not-so-hidden winch. But it looks just right and I’m very happy we went that direction with it.
If any of you are thinking about it, or are on the fence, give HK a look.
As such, the ability for self-recovery seemed like a very good idea. I’d always liked the stealth look of a hidden winch on a GX, so I decided to pursue that route.
After researching a bit, I found HK Offroad. Primarily a Jeep shop in Southern Cal, the owner Bash has a GX470 and offers a couple items for that vehicle…a swing out rear tire carrier, and a hidden winch mount. I ordered the winch plate, and after talking with him about a few custom changes he built and shipped it promptly.
The winch plate is extremely strong, with 1/4” steel, beefy recovery points, beautiful welds and plenty of gussets and structure. Weighing in at about 60 lbs and attaching to the frame rails with 10 bolts, this thing is hell-for-stout, yet everything lined up perfectly. Install was a breeze.
After removing the bumper fascia, my buddy and I removed the front crash bar. This gets discarded, but the hardware gets re-used.
The HK winch plate installs on the frame rails using that hardware.
Once the plate was secure, we bolted a Smittybuilt X2O 10k winch to it and wired it up. Everything was very straightforward.
Bash has some installation pics on his site…one of them shows a rig that had the bumper nicely trimmed…it looked great!
So, out came the grinder, and 10 minutes later I had a bobbed bumper and a not-so-hidden winch. But it looks just right and I’m very happy we went that direction with it.
If any of you are thinking about it, or are on the fence, give HK a look.
